Just Love Words

How anyone ever learns to speak and spell English is a mystery. Below are common words that surely confound anyone—child or adult—trying to learn this quirky language.

Don’t You Just ♥ Words?

If cow rhymes with boughshouldn’t cow rhyme with cough?

If rafter rhymes with laughtershouldn’t rafter rhyme with daughter?

If hoe rhymes with toeshouldn’t hoe rhyme with shoe?

If threw sounds like throughshouldn’t threw rhyme with rough?

If lime rhymes with climbshouldn’t limb sound like lime?

These erratic spellings have to do with the development of the English language—which wasn’t really “English” and wasn’t really a language. From the end of the Roman occupation, the ancient Brits spoke a mishmash of Germanic and Norse tongues, with a soupcon of French and Latin throw in by the upper classes.

The language underwent constant change until the 15th century, leading to such confusion that people from one part of England could barely understand those from another.

It was William Claxton, a mid-15th century printer, who first began to consolidate and standardize what was by then "modern" English. But he started a bit too early—printing technology cemented the language before all the kinks could be worked out. Thus, the cow-bough-cough imbroglio.